The World is Tired Here (It's a Solemn Occasion)
by Anamakorga
Summary: It is one thing to know something is going to happen. It is another entirely to experience it.


_"And sometimes," Carlos grins. His eyes are full of stars and science, and there is nothing Cecil wants more in the world then to kiss him, right now, but he knows that Carlos is doing something important, and you can't just kiss people when they're doing something important. "You have to take the data and realise that there is no scientific explanation for how you feel, only that it is real, and that you feel it, and you have to do whatever feels right."_

* * *

The ground is wet beneath his feet, each step the strike of a hammer on the head of a nail. Heavy, and final, and not quite entirely smooth, no matter how he wants it to be.

* * *

_"Hey, Cecil?" Carlos asks, rolling over in bed and brushing a lock of hair out of his husband's eyes. "You know I love you more than anything else in the world, right?" Cecil smiles, soft and perfect._

_"I love you," He says._

_"I know, but I want you to know that I love you back, and that, out of all of the millions of moles in the universe, the ones that make up you are the most important thing to me, and that if I were ever to lose you, I would be entirely devastated. You do know that, right?"_

_"Of course I know that. But you needn't worry about losing me, sweet Carlos. I'll always be here. Always."_

* * *

The object clutched in his hand is not a flower, or a bloodstone, or anything else of that calibre. It is more important than that. He hopes, in the end, only to be more important than that.

* * *

_"Aren't you-," Carlos pauses as he looks over at Cecil. "Hey, hey, honey. You're going to be okay." There are tears quietly trailing their way down Cecil's cheeks. He tries to choke them back to little avail, and only succeeds in making a throaty, guttural sound, like a wounded animal taking its final breath._

_"I'm scared." He says. "Scared for you, scared for Night Vale, scared for me and the possibility that if we get split up we may not see each other again."_

_"Now Cecil." Carlos says. "Why on earth would this, of all days, be the day you die? You have made it through plenty of life-threatening situations before, even if, at the time, you did not realise you were in a life-threatening situation. Why would today, of all days, be the one on which one of us dies?"_

* * *

He knew, in the end, that this would happen, and that, in the end, he would be left standing here.

* * *

_"I don't get it." Carlos says._

_"What?"_

_"Night Vale. Nothing here makes- nothing here makes any sense. I try to connect it in so many different ways, but in the end it's all for nothing and I'm just left guessing what on earth might come next. It's like a gigantic jigsaw puzzle, and sometimes I think that maybe I was just given a box without all of the pieces, but other times it feels like there's someone stealing pieces, and I just can't finish the puzzle, no matter how hard I try."_

_"What about me?"_

_"You make the least sense of all. But that's part of why I love you, I think. You're never boring. Whenever I think I've learned all there is to be learned about you, you find something entirely new about yourself that I never would have guessed."_

* * *

It was never a good idea, but things that he did were very rarely good ideas. They ranged from very bad to mediocre, and this had been one of his very bad ones. He had known, from the day they had first held hands beneath the lights above the Arby's, that this is where he would end up.

* * *

_"Sometimes I wonder if you even realise what all the words coming out of your mouth are." Carlos says, putting another box of Flaky-O's in the cart._

_"Well of course I realise. I have to, so I don't violate any libel laws. If I were to do that I could end up in reeducation, and that's never fun. Not for me, not for the sheriff's secret police, not for whoever has to record all of those reeducation tapes- you know, I really think we should be more appreciative of all of the work that the sheriff's secret police put into reeducating the citizens of Night Vale when one of them commits any thought crimes."_

_"I really think that too many things are a thought crime."_

_"Carlos! Shhh! That's a thought crime!"_

* * *

He grows unmistakably older, as decades stretch into centuries, and centuries stretch into millennia. He is so tired.

* * *

_"You look nice. Why'd you dress up?"_

_"I just felt like it." Cecil says, sprawling himself across the couch and over Carlos. "You know what we should watch? Cat Ballou."_

_"Cat Ballou sounds good. Really, though, honey, why'd you dress up?"_

_"You deserve someone with good taste in clothing. I wish I could-," He cuts himself off._

_"You wish you could what? Come on honey, you can you can tell me anything."_

_"I wish I could be everything you deserve. Because that is so much, and I have so little to give."_

_"Cecil. You are a perfect, wonderful, amazing person, and I could not be happier to have you as my husband."_

_"You don't mean that-,"_

_"I mean every word of that. I love you for who you are, not who you might be, or could be, or were before. I love every day I spend with you, even if I don't realise it at the time."_

* * *

He crouches at the foot of a cold grave, piled high with flowers, and places the Dangermeter at it. It's an old thing now, but it works. It rests, quietly, at green, because there is no creature in the world who would dare deprive him of this moment.

* * *

_"I can't believe we made it all the way up here."_

_"I can't believe there's more than one mountain."_

_"Of course you can't." Carlos laughs. "Guess what we get to do now?"_

_"What?"_

_"Go all the way back down."_

_"Carlos! Why would you bring us to the top of this mountain if all we were going to do was go back down again?_

_"That's what you do when you're hiking."_

_"But that's not- not- you know! You know what I mean! You know what they say about mountains?"_

_"'Mountains? More Like Nothings!' or 'It is flat all the way 'round'?"_

_"Well, they do say both those things, but I was talking specifically about 'when the snow falls, it is time to take a walk in the mountains, except snow will never fall, so it's never time to take a walk in the mountains. Mountains are stupid, and so are you'."_

_"I've never heard that one before."_

_"I was looking through lists of sayings the other day, so it's kind of obscure, but that doesn't make it any less accurate."_

_Carlos laughs._

* * *

He can still hear his voice. He can still feel his curly hair in his hands. He knows that when the time comes when he can no longer remember those things, he will hardly remember himself, and nothing will really matter anymore. He sighs, deep, and long, and with too many emotions in it for them to ever be conveyed through any other means

* * *

_"Sometimes I wonder if it would be better to know how I die. I know, intellectually, that it probably wouldn't, but that's still probably, and, by extension, non-definite, and, by further extension, could be a probably not."_

_"It's worse. Knowing anything about your own death. I wish I didn't. I'll meet people and wonder if they're the person who kills me."_

_"I'm sorry."_

_"I'm fine. Just talk about something else. Say something sweet and meaningless. In spanish."_

_"Me encanta tu forma de hablar. Amo la manera en que sonríes. Me encanta la forma en que cuando te levantas por la mañana siempre estás preparado para tomar lo que la vida te dé."_  
_"I have no idea what you just said, but I'm sure it was lovely. Je t'aime tellement plus chaque jour qui passe, et quand tu mourras, tu me manqueras pour toujours."_

_"I also have no idea what you just said, but I'm sure it was wonderful."_

_"I love you."_

_"I love you too."_

* * *

Cecil Gershwin Palmer lies at his husband's grave and weeps knowing that he can never join him.


End file.
